Racism, Politics and the Recovering Addict

Racism, Politics and the Recovering Addict PDF Author: Cb Blake
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462860370
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
A STORY about the life of a BLACK BOY growing up on the SOUTH SIDE of CHGO. The streets werent so mean then, YOU HAD A LIFE WORTH LIVING. You could have an adventure and LIVE to tell about it. Adventures like, Flying a kite, playing baseball, making bows & arrows, stealing bikes and lunches from white rich people, walking the walls at the Museum of Science and Industry and going to the 59th street beach. This saga, tells what it was like to move into the Robert Taylor Housing Project and see a better life for yourself and your buddies. It tells of Dreams of going to the PROs and / or COLLEGE, to live in a CONCRETE COMMUNITY where you could come outside play with your buddies and dont end up DEAD. You went to SEGREGATED HBHSs (HISTORICALLY BLACK HIGH SCHOOLS), DuSable, Phillips, Marshall, or Crane and play sports in HOPES that one day you could come back as a PRO. Some of us made it, like, KEVIN PORTER, MAURICE CHEEKS, and KIRBY PUCKETT, most of us did not. This HOPE, this DREAM became a LIFE SHATTERED and one day a return to; RACISM, POLITICS and RECOVERING ADDICTS. The book tells of a story, where a BLACK MAN returns to CHGO to face the RACISM of a SEGREGATED PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM where WHITES are in control of BLACK COMMUNITIES that are legal, and BLACKS are in control of BLACK COMMUNITIES that are illegal. This is where an EDUCATED BLACK MAN FROM CHGO DOESNT STAND A CHANCE of making it in either world. The next 20 years of his life is spent in & out of both worlds, not accepted by either. Not living legal because RACISM is so PREVALENT in CHGO WHERE BLACK MEN are given these TEMP JOBS and the possibility of success is impeded by that always present GLASS CEILING, YOU CAN LOOK UP but DONT GO UP. This is the story of a BLACK MAN, TRUE TO THE GAME, but the GAME AINT TRUE TO HIM. He exceeds in SELLING DRUGS, but the, OLD GAME IS DEAD and he gets STUCK UP and this TRAUMATIC EVENT opens the door to ADDICTION. Frustrated with the protection afforded to him by his RACE, this Educated College Man gets caught up in the GRIP, a point of HOMELESSNESS, JOBLESSNESS, and PENNIELESSNESS. The saga tells of what an Addicted Black Man experiences from Pacific Gardens to Hobo Road. It tells of the experience that Addiction brings JAILS, INSTITUTIONS & DEATH. JAILS, where he meets the Devil Himself, and by the GRACE of GOD, escapes the deadly clutches. INSTITUTIONS, where, if not careful, a BLACK MAN can get lost forever and get so far gone that HE IS LOST FOREVER, GONE BEYOND RECALL. DEATH THE NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD, wandering the CITY virtually NIGHT & DAY looking for JUST ONE MORE. One more hit, One more fix, One more drink, One more pill, Anything to fill that empty spot, that vacuum. A life where ONE IS TOO MANY and A THOUSAND IS NEVER ENOUGH. CHASING THE GHOST, CHASING JASON, CHASING A LIFE MEANT FOR BLACK BOYS GROWING UP ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHGO. A LIFE MEANT TO CHEW YOU UP AND SPIT YOU OUT, UNTIL YOU WITHER AND DIE. SO OUT OF THIS LIVING, OUT OF THIS DYING, OUT OF THIS EXISTENCE, COMES THE NEXT 20 YEARS TO HAVE A GOD WHO CHOOSES TO PICK HIM UP AND OUT OF THE MUCK AND THE MIRE, AFTER THOSE AROUND HIM HAVE COUNTED HIM OUT. AFTER BEING THE LOWEST SCUM ON EARTH, THIS HP, THIS HIGHER POWER, DECIDES. The HP DECIDES that HE IS ONE OF THE CHOSEN FEW, who will CARRY THE MESSAGE to others, all over this country. To carry the message that, ANY ADDICT CAN CHANGE HIS LIFE, LOSE THE DESIRE TO USE AND FIND A NEW WAY TO LIVE. THAT THERE IS A LIFE STYLE THAT EXISTS FOR ALL OF US, A PROVEN WAY OF LIFE, THROUGH THE 12 STEPS. YES, EVEN A CHUMP, RAISED ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHGO, CAN BECOME A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY DESPITE THE RACISM, DESPITE THE POLITICS, DESPITE THE ADDICTION, CAN RECOVER FROM A HORRIBLE EXISTENCE THAT IS MEANT TO END LIFE, HERE ON EARTH.

Racism, Politics and the Recovering Addict

Racism, Politics and the Recovering Addict PDF Author: Cb Blake
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462860370
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 123

Get Book Here

Book Description
A STORY about the life of a BLACK BOY growing up on the SOUTH SIDE of CHGO. The streets werent so mean then, YOU HAD A LIFE WORTH LIVING. You could have an adventure and LIVE to tell about it. Adventures like, Flying a kite, playing baseball, making bows & arrows, stealing bikes and lunches from white rich people, walking the walls at the Museum of Science and Industry and going to the 59th street beach. This saga, tells what it was like to move into the Robert Taylor Housing Project and see a better life for yourself and your buddies. It tells of Dreams of going to the PROs and / or COLLEGE, to live in a CONCRETE COMMUNITY where you could come outside play with your buddies and dont end up DEAD. You went to SEGREGATED HBHSs (HISTORICALLY BLACK HIGH SCHOOLS), DuSable, Phillips, Marshall, or Crane and play sports in HOPES that one day you could come back as a PRO. Some of us made it, like, KEVIN PORTER, MAURICE CHEEKS, and KIRBY PUCKETT, most of us did not. This HOPE, this DREAM became a LIFE SHATTERED and one day a return to; RACISM, POLITICS and RECOVERING ADDICTS. The book tells of a story, where a BLACK MAN returns to CHGO to face the RACISM of a SEGREGATED PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM where WHITES are in control of BLACK COMMUNITIES that are legal, and BLACKS are in control of BLACK COMMUNITIES that are illegal. This is where an EDUCATED BLACK MAN FROM CHGO DOESNT STAND A CHANCE of making it in either world. The next 20 years of his life is spent in & out of both worlds, not accepted by either. Not living legal because RACISM is so PREVALENT in CHGO WHERE BLACK MEN are given these TEMP JOBS and the possibility of success is impeded by that always present GLASS CEILING, YOU CAN LOOK UP but DONT GO UP. This is the story of a BLACK MAN, TRUE TO THE GAME, but the GAME AINT TRUE TO HIM. He exceeds in SELLING DRUGS, but the, OLD GAME IS DEAD and he gets STUCK UP and this TRAUMATIC EVENT opens the door to ADDICTION. Frustrated with the protection afforded to him by his RACE, this Educated College Man gets caught up in the GRIP, a point of HOMELESSNESS, JOBLESSNESS, and PENNIELESSNESS. The saga tells of what an Addicted Black Man experiences from Pacific Gardens to Hobo Road. It tells of the experience that Addiction brings JAILS, INSTITUTIONS & DEATH. JAILS, where he meets the Devil Himself, and by the GRACE of GOD, escapes the deadly clutches. INSTITUTIONS, where, if not careful, a BLACK MAN can get lost forever and get so far gone that HE IS LOST FOREVER, GONE BEYOND RECALL. DEATH THE NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD, wandering the CITY virtually NIGHT & DAY looking for JUST ONE MORE. One more hit, One more fix, One more drink, One more pill, Anything to fill that empty spot, that vacuum. A life where ONE IS TOO MANY and A THOUSAND IS NEVER ENOUGH. CHASING THE GHOST, CHASING JASON, CHASING A LIFE MEANT FOR BLACK BOYS GROWING UP ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHGO. A LIFE MEANT TO CHEW YOU UP AND SPIT YOU OUT, UNTIL YOU WITHER AND DIE. SO OUT OF THIS LIVING, OUT OF THIS DYING, OUT OF THIS EXISTENCE, COMES THE NEXT 20 YEARS TO HAVE A GOD WHO CHOOSES TO PICK HIM UP AND OUT OF THE MUCK AND THE MIRE, AFTER THOSE AROUND HIM HAVE COUNTED HIM OUT. AFTER BEING THE LOWEST SCUM ON EARTH, THIS HP, THIS HIGHER POWER, DECIDES. The HP DECIDES that HE IS ONE OF THE CHOSEN FEW, who will CARRY THE MESSAGE to others, all over this country. To carry the message that, ANY ADDICT CAN CHANGE HIS LIFE, LOSE THE DESIRE TO USE AND FIND A NEW WAY TO LIVE. THAT THERE IS A LIFE STYLE THAT EXISTS FOR ALL OF US, A PROVEN WAY OF LIFE, THROUGH THE 12 STEPS. YES, EVEN A CHUMP, RAISED ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHGO, CAN BECOME A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY DESPITE THE RACISM, DESPITE THE POLITICS, DESPITE THE ADDICTION, CAN RECOVER FROM A HORRIBLE EXISTENCE THAT IS MEANT TO END LIFE, HERE ON EARTH.

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309439124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

The Urge

The Urge PDF Author: Carl Erik Fisher
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525561455
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

Unequal under Law

Unequal under Law PDF Author: Doris Marie Provine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226684784
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Race is clearly a factor in government efforts to control dangerous drugs, but the precise ways that race affects drug laws remain difficult to pinpoint. Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts. Doris Marie Provine’s engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design. Moreover, their racial origins have long been ignored by every branch of government. This dangerous denial threatens our constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law and mutes a much-needed national discussion about institutionalized racism—a discussion that Unequal under Law promises to initiate.

The American Disease

The American Disease PDF Author: David F. Musto
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195125096
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
The American Disease is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the United States. Supporting the theory that Americans' attitudes toward drugs have followed a cyclic pattern of tolerance and restraint, author David F. Musto examines the relationz between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War up to the present. Originally published in 1973, and then in an expanded edition in 1987, this third edition contains a new chapter and preface that both address the renewed debate on policy and drug legislation from the end of the Reagan administration to the current Clinton administration. Here, Musto thoroughly investigates how our nation has dealt with such issues as the controversies over prevention programs and mandatory minimum sentencing, the catastrophe of the crack epidemic, the fear of a heroin revival, and the continued debate over the legalization of marijuana.

Unbroken Brain

Unbroken Brain PDF Author: Maia Szalavitz
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466859563
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More people than ever before see themselves as addicted to, or recovering from, addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs, prescription meds, sex, gambling, porn, or the internet. But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment. Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and the notion of a simple "addictive personality," The New York Times Bestseller, Unbroken Brain, offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum -- and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no "addictive personality" or single treatment that works for all. Combining Maia Szalavitz's personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research,Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction. Her writings on radical addiction therapies have been featured in The Washington Post, Vice Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, in addition to multiple other publications. She has been interviewed about her book on many radio shows including Fresh Air with Terry Gross and The Brian Lehrer show.

Scripting Addiction

Scripting Addiction PDF Author: E. Summerson Carr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400836654
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Gaming the language of addiction treatment Scripting Addiction takes readers into the highly ritualized world of mainstream American addiction treatment. It is a world where clinical practitioners evaluate how drug users speak about themselves and their problems, and where the ideal of "healthy" talk is explicitly promoted, carefully monitored, and identified as the primary sign of therapeutic progress. The book explores the puzzling question: why do addiction counselors dedicate themselves to reconciling drug users' relationship to language in order to reconfigure their relationship to drugs? To answer this question, anthropologist Summerson Carr traces the charged interactions between counselors, clients, and case managers at "Fresh Beginnings," an addiction treatment program for homeless women in the midwestern United States. She shows that shelter, food, and even the custody of children hang in the balance of everyday therapeutic exchanges, such as clinical assessments, individual therapy sessions, and self-help meetings. Acutely aware of the high stakes of self-representation, experienced clients analyze and learn to effectively perform prescribed ways of speaking, a mimetic practice they call "flipping the script." As a clinical ethnography, Scripting Addiction examines how decades of clinical theorizing about addiction, language, self-knowledge, and sobriety is manifested in interactions between counselors and clients. As an ethnography of the contemporary United States, the book demonstrates the complex cultural roots of the powerful clinical ideas that shape therapeutic transactions— and by extension administrative routines and institutional dynamics—at sites such as "Fresh Beginnings."

Drugs, Victims and Race

Drugs, Victims and Race PDF Author: Anita Kalunta-Crumpton
Publisher: Waterside Press
ISBN: 1904380182
Category : Drug abuse
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
The author explores common but frequently misleading themes concerning race and drug control, providing an outline of UK drugs strategy from its class-oriented beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day, identifying the real victims of drugs, drug trafficking and drug supply. She looks at the full range of drugs issues from the supply end of the drugs chain through enforcement and court proceedings to treatment approaches re addicts and other drug users.

Addicted to Rehab

Addicted to Rehab PDF Author: Allison McKim
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813587654
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
After decades of the American “war on drugs” and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment. In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system—two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim’s book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.

The Sum of Us

The Sum of Us PDF Author: Heather McGhee
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525509577
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s new podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL